Paradigms Lost

Paradigms Lost
The Post Cold War Era
Edited by Chester Hartman and Pedro Vilanova
TNI/Pluto Press, 1992

The extraordinary events that have exploded on the world scene in recent years, such as the breaching of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War and the break-up of the Soviet Union, have altered established ways of thinking about world politics - the basic paradigms - that have been in place since the Second Cold War. How have progressive thinkers responded to the challenge of reassessing their approach to international politics? In this book, scholars from Europe and North America explore some of the most important problems facing the world today: national and international conflicts, environmental degradation, Third World debt and economic marginalisation - all of which demand an urgent democratic response. At a time of dramatic political change, how we think about the world must also change. It is in this spirit that the book has been conceived.

Contents

• Introduction by Chester Hartman and Pedro Vilanova
1. Global Politics and Security
• Paradigms in Crisis, by Pedro Vilanova
• The New Landscape of European Security, by Dan Smith
• The Siren of Nationalism, by Fred Halliday
• Military Intervention in the Third World in the 1990s, by Mariano Aguirre
• Third World Conflicts after the End of the Cold War, by Jochen Hippler
• Third World Revolutionary Projects and the End of the Cold War, by Joel Rocamora
2. Development, People and Ecology
• Sustainable Development in the 1990s, by Robin Broad, John Cavanagh and Walden Bello
• Managing the Global House. Redefining Economics, by Susan George
• Participatory Peace Policies, by Michael Shuman
• Third World Labour and the Cold War, by Saul Landau and David Pedersen
• From Cold War to Drug War, by Peter Andreas and Eva Bertram
• Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, by Gar Alperovitz

Introduction by Chester Hartman and Pedro Vilanova

At the turn of the decade from the 1980s into the 1990s, the pace of world politics accelerated. Much of this was due to developments in the USSR. The reform process of perestroika led to a new East-West détente which created realistic hope for major arm cuts and encouraged pressure for change in eastern Europe. As that became irresistible, the Berlin Walll was breached and the Cold War and the division of Europe came to an end.

In late 1989 and early 1990, there was widespread optimism that the world was moving to a more secure, less armed and perhaps more democratic and just condition. Such hopes seemed justified not only in Europe, for there were positive developments elsewhere: leading opponents of apartheid were released from prison in South Africa; Namibia gained independence; Cuban and South African forces withdrew from the Angolan War; ceasefire talks took place between combatants in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia; popular pressure for democracy was renewed in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa; Chile edged out from under military dictatorship.

Yet that optimism did not last long. In August 1990, Iraq's annexation of Kuwait was countered by a huge military build-up by the US-led coalition. The following January, a tense confrontation led to a short and extraordinarily violent war. Following that war, uprising in Iraq were ferociously repressed and three million Kurds fled to seek refuge along Iraq's borders with Iran and Turkey. Elsewhere, it emerged that, as ever, great hopes may feed into greater disappointment. The USSR was edging back into repression as perestroika fell foul of the conflicting pressures of nationalists, radicals and the reactionary old guard - pressures which exploded into the failed coup of August 1991. There was renewed violence in South Africa. Famine threatened 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the gains of the previous two or three years, even in eastern Europe, began to seem less significant and more fragile than they had first appeared.

How are we to understand these changes? They create new uncertainties in an international political game in which the unpredictable and the unknown are causes of insecurity. This has fed division within progressive opinion about how to interpret and respond to change in the USSR and eastern Europe, about what position to take on the Gulf War, about political priorities in the new conditions.

The changes of the past few years demand new ideas, new ways of thinking about world politics. The 1990s will not be an easy decade if we are unable to bring new approaches to bear as we explore the paramount issues. This book is an attempt to map out some of those issues and consider how to approach them. It does not attempt to be the last word on any of the problems, but rather to begin a necessary process of reflection about a fast-changing world scene.

The essays in this book are by Fellows of two sister institutions - the Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam, and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. Both IPS and TNI have long track records in their concern about major global problems. Both have had significant influence on the thinking of social movements on issues of peace, East-West relations, Third World development and democracy. Both are independent of any government or political party. IPS is the older body, founded in 1963; it is a leading progressive research centre, addressing problems of both international and American politics. TNI was founded in 1973, originally as the international wing of IPS; it is now an independent institute with its own programme and its own focus on transnational issues, addressing the fundamental disparities of global wealth and power. It is a dispersed institute, with Fellows in several countries. TNI aims for a transnational audience, seeking to catalyse awareness of the need for joint action on major problems which cross national boundaries.

The essays in this book reflect the current stage of a continuing engagement with the leading questions of the era. Problems such as environmental degradation, Third World debt and economic marginalisation, the political and economic evolution of the USSR and the West - all these demand an urgent democractic response. It is our contention that movements are far better equipped to confront those problems and generate solutions if they have access to a body of research and scholarship which explores and illuminates the issues. At this time of dramatic political change, how we think about the world must also change. It is in that spirit that we have conceived and now present this book.